Arts in Education

Curriculum

All AIE students are required take the two core courses of the HGSE Arts in Education Program, including S-300: The Arts in Education: Learning in and through the Arts (in the fall semester) and S-301: The Arts in Education: Research, Policy, and Practice (in the spring semester). These courses, which meet twice a week and are open only to enrolled AIE students at HGSE, are taught by AIE director Steve Seidel. Considering the arts and their role in a range of issues related to pedagogy, policy, and human development, the courses are enriched by the guest lectures of researchers, artists, and educators, as well as funders and policy makers, who have an influence on children's learning through art. They are supplemented by weekly section meetings, by on- and off-campus gatherings of the cohort (including an art show and a cabaret each semester), and by contact with members of the AIE Advisory Council who have supported the program since its inception in the mid-1990s.

In addition to the two core courses, AIE students must also take at least three arts-related courses during the one-year program—courses for which a significant amount of a student’s research and writing will be arts-related. This arts-related work may be done for courses that are clearly related to the arts (such as a museum-learning, children’s literature, or music-education course) or—instructor willing—for courses that do not inherently incorporate the arts. Faculty throughout the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former AIE students have identified particular courses that lend themselves to such work. Please click the link to Arts-Related courses for examples of courses in which AIE students have fulfilled their arts-related requirements.

An approved arts-related field placement or independent study counts as an HGSE course dedicated to the arts. AIE students may include one field placement and one independent study as course work in satisfaction of requirements for the AIE program. Field placements counted for course credit in the program must include a final written paper. To learn more about setting up an FEP for credit, visit the FEP website. (And to learn more about identifying sites for FEP projects, see the “students” page of this website.)

Finally, HGSE students may also cross-register for courses in other parts of Harvard—in the Harvard music department, the Visual and Environmental Studies program, or the Kennedy School of Government, for example—as well as at MIT.

The remaining courses needed to complete degree requirements (for a total of at least eight courses) are elective. AIE students may select the elective courses from within and across HGSE areas and from courses offered by any faculty at Harvard University.

Examples of Past Student Coursework, organized by the following interests:

• Dance
• Drama
• Museum Education
• Music
• Visual Arts
• Writing
• General Interest

(Poster by Natalie Bortoli AIE Ed.M. 2003)

View a full array of individual course schedules from recent academic years:

• Student Pathways 2007-2008 (156KB pdf)
• Student Pathways 2006-2007 (149KB doc)
• Student Pathways 2005-06 (205KB pdf)